Thanksgiving travel to hit record level

By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY

ATLANTA
–
When J. Kevin Powell set out with his wife and 3-year-old daughter for the 11-hour drive from Atlanta to Baltimore for Thanksgiving in 2008, he figured he was ahead of the game. They left in the pre-dawn hours on Wednesday, timing their trip to miss rush-hour traffic in cities along the way.

By Kate Patterson, USA TODAY

Washington, D.C., is the USA's most congested metropolitan area, and the city has the nation's worst drivers, according to the Texas Transportation Institute and insurer Allstate.

Washington, D.C., is the USA's most congested metropolitan area, and the city has the nation's worst drivers, according to the Texas Transportation Institute and insurer Allstate.

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That plan quickly collapsed.

"The first few hours were smooth sailing," says Powell, 32, owner of the men's self-improvement website BurgundyMag.com. "Then just north of Charlotte, we pretty much hit a standstill. We ended up going 10 or so miles in an hour and a half." They got off Interstate 85 at a mall to give little Kaylee a break, then hit slow traffic again between Greensboro and Raleigh in North Carolina.

The back-ups got worse in Virginia. The trip took 20 hours, almost twice as long as usual. "It was really awful," Powell says. "Now, if I can't fly up to visit the family, we just stay here."

For millions of homeward-bound Americans, the trek to the family Thanksgiving gathering is difficult enough, with shrieking kids in the car, uncertain weather possibilities, the looming specter of Aunt Maisie's oyster loaf and the prospect of spending time with that least-favorite in-law.

What could be worse?

How about having to navigate congested cities with the USA's worst drivers, or through some of the nation's worst speed traps? Or trying to traverse cities with the most traffic cameras or heaviest congestion, or states with the worst roads and the highest speeding fines?

Millions of Americans will drive to the annual holiday gathering next week — about 38.2 million, 90% of the 42.5 million expected to travel during the Thanksgiving week this year, according to AAA. That's a 4% jump over 2010 and the first significant increase in travel of at least 50 miles for any holiday this year, the auto club says.

Kevin Powell drove from Atlanta to Baltimore with his wife, Rachel, and their daughter, Kaylee, a few years ago the day before Thanksgiving. The 11-hour trip took 20 hours, he said. Now the family, expanded with two-month old J. Davis, stays home if they can't fly.

Washington, D.C., is the USA's most-congested metropolitan area, and the city has the nation's worst drivers, according to the Texas Transportation Institute and insurer Allstate. And an analysis by The Weather Channel finds the D.C. metro area has the nation's seventh most-congested road at Thanksgiving: Interstate 495 from Merrifield, Va., to Landover, Md.

Tim Lomax, a research engineer at Texas A&M University who studies traffic congestion, knows the dreariness of getting stuck in D.C.-area holiday traffic. But unexplained holiday traffic tie-ups far from urban centers can be particularly maddening for holiday travelers, he says.

"The stop-and-go traffic out in the countryside just isn't a part of what everybody's expecting," says Lomax, a co-author of the Texas Transportation Institute's Urban Mobility Report. "Driving to downtown D.C., you kind of know where you're going and what you're going to have to deal with. But if you're out in the country trying to get to Grandma's house, you don't know if the problem causing the congestion is just over the next hill or 20 miles away. And that sign saying 'Expect Delays' is mind-numbingly unhelpful."

Lomax says most professional traffic engineers don't have the equipment and monitoring devices to provide extensive information about rural congestion. "The saving grace is there are a lot more ways to access the information now," he says. "If you have a smartphone, you can at least get a sense of how far ahead the road is congested."

Holiday traffic backups will peak one hour earlier than normal during the Wednesday afternoon commute as many leave work early, according to Inrix, a Kirkland, Wash., firm that tracks traffic congestion. Most cities will see a lighter than normal Wednesday morning commute as travelers take the day off to make final plans before hitting the road, Inrix says.

Spokesman Jim Bak says that gateway cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Hartford can expect significant backups over the holiday period.

Inrix recommends that those heading out on Wednesday plan to leave home no later than 2 p.m. local time to avoid getting caught in gridlock. "If you can, go on Thursday morning," Bak says. "There will be no traffic on Thursday."

Research traffic laws before trip

As annoying as it can be to sit in Thanksgiving traffic, particularly when you don't know what's causing it, nothing puts a damper on the holiday spirit like getting nailed for speeding in those areas where it's not congested — especially when the ticket costs as much as a summer vacation.

Drivers will want to be particularly careful in Illinois and Virginia, where the maximum penalties for speeding top out at $2,500, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Rounding out the list of the 10 states with the highest maximum speeding fines: Georgia and Nevada, $2,000; Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, $1,000; Utah, $750; Iowa, $625.

But it doesn't take a mega-fine to take one's mind off the turkey and trimmings; even a run-of-the-mill ticket will do the trick, says Powell, who got stopped for speeding in South Carolina in 2007. "You're already dealing with the stress of seeing family, packing everybody in the car, dealing with the traffic," he says. "But then you get a ticket, and that just makes it all worse."

Powell, who says he sped up to pass a dawdler and was caught on radar by a trooper on an overpass who radioed ahead to another trooper, was fined $150. "It sure seems like the cops aren't out there to protect you but they're looking at this as a financial opportunity to meet the year's budget," he says.

The National Motorists Association, a Waunakee, Wis.-based group that advocates for motorists, says he's right.

"Holidays are a prime time for stepped-up traffic enforcement, especially with out-of-state drivers, since they're less likely to fight their tickets," NMA spokesman John Bowman says. "It's a real pain to have to travel across three states to fight a ticket of any kind. They bank on the fact you won't do it."

He urges Thanksgiving travelers to do a bit of planning before hitting the road. "Do some research on traffic laws and enforcement practices where you'll be traveling," he says. "Look at what different places have done regarding cell-phone use while driving. The laws are evolving rapidly."

He suggests drivers check sites such as handsfreeinfo.com for information on cellphone laws, and the NMA-sponsored sites speedtrap.org for updates on speed traps and roadblock.org for real-time information on police checkpoints.

"We expect to see an increase in sobriety checkpoints around the holidays," Bowman says. "It's prime pickings for people who have been out socializing."

Some other places holiday drivers might want to avoid:

•The states with the worst roads, as ranked by MainStreet.com, are Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Arkansas, Hawaii, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Alabama.

With careful planning, the NMA's Bowman says, drivers can reduce the odds of having an unpleasant Thanksgiving experience on the road.

Keep weather conditions in mind

The weather shouldn't keep anyone from making it to Grandma's.

The National Weather Service says that Thanksgiving week will be nice over most of the USA. "Early indications show that there will not be any significant weather-related travel disruptions," says NWS spokesman Chris Vaccaro. "The weather will be favorable for most of the country leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday."

He says an area of high pressure over most of the nation will keep weather conditions "mostly sunny and dry."

That isn't always the case. Sometimes, no matter how carefully one plans a route around speed traps, bad drivers, rough roads and congested corridors, Mother Nature can step in to scuttle everything.

Tara Hamet, 31, of Charleston, S.C., had just such an experience in 2008.

It was her first Thanksgiving since moving South, and she was scheduled to fly from Charleston to visit her family back in the Detroit area. She flew to Charlotte early that Wednesday morning, and that's when the drama began. Her flight to Detroit, along with scores of others, had been canceled because of a blizzard and snow storm moving across the Midwest.

"They had shut everything down," says Hamet, a financial analyst. After a lot of negotiation, she managed to snare a compact rental car. Hamet's relatives were calling from Michigan, urging her not to come. "I said, I'm going to drive home," Hamet says. Complicating matters, she had forgotten her telephone charger, and she was using the phone for directions.

"I had one bar left on my cellphone, so I was telling my family don't call me, don't text me," she says. She found the going tough and ended up spending Wednesday night at a friend's home in Toledo. The drive took about twice as long as normal, and she finally made it home late Thanksgiving Day.

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